THANK YOU ETSY FOR MAKING ME YOUR FEATURED SELLER! Holy Moley Guacamole!
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2013/featured-shop-astral-boutique/

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The California Dream, for me, is about natural fabrics, beautifully draped silhouettes, creative embroidery, and love of color... all of which compliment the free-form lifestyle that we live on the edge of the continent. I specialize in pieces from 1960s and 1970s, when West Coast flower children had an intense love affair with Art Nouveau and Victorian motifs.

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I have taken a very windy, circuitous road to end up at this happy home on Etsy, where I get to play with history and beauty for a living.

I always knew I was an artist, but for a long time it seemed impossible to blend my love of literature, film, dress-up, and magic into one "coherent" form. I studied film and animation in college in Boston, The Netherlands, and San Francisco, then set out on an exploration of the so-called Real World. This meant that I was a nanny, a shuttle bus driver, a substitute teacher, a security gate guard at the San Francisco Zoo, a pizza delivery girl, and a Santa Elf at the mall.

When I wasn't at work, I was following my favorite band (The Cure) around the world, studying yoga, playing in a rock group called The Sexy Vacations with my best girlfriend, making zines, de-constructing billboards, back-country camping to hot springs, dancing in my birthday suit at Burning Man and the Rainbow Gathering, making pilgrimages to Cadillac Ranch, and living in a van by the beach in San Diego that was spray painted with giant flowers and couldn't go in reverse. My hair was purple and red and orange and pink and blue and black and blonde and long and bowl cut and bobbed and bald. I dressed as a goth, a tomboy, a hippie, a fairy, and I even tried to Fit In once or twice (which was, of course, a total failure).

Every once in a while, I would make efforts at selling my own art: hand-painted t-shirts, collaged votive candles, succulents in painted pots. Doing things in person, the old-fashioned way, was super hard for me cause I was so painfully shy, but I didn't have a computer until 2004 and had never even BEEN on the internet.

At some point, I decided that if I had no idea what to go back to "regular" school for, I should just educate myself in the subject that interested me the most: earth magic. I started studying Herbalism, and got totally obsessed- I ended up going to every Herbal School in Northern California. I learned about how the body works, how to make medicine and healing food, and how to meditate with plants. Most importantly I learned that the invisible world of energy and spirit is much larger and more powerful than our little physical reality, and magic is darn real.

After that, the Nature bug had bit me hard, and as life had come to one of those fabled crossroads, I convinced my husband to move to the woods with me.

Now we are in Grass Valley, in a kind of artists- colony-mixed-with-rednecks world up in the very rural Sierra foothills, making music and art and- at last!- I am a working artist, thanks to the magical, creativity-exploding world of Etsy.

Me and my husband/best friend Chris and our black cat Lil Bits live in a rickety rented house that looks like it was decorated by drunken elves, which is usually messy because it's strewn with music gear and costumes.

We have made all of our life choices based on the path of the heart, and while we might not be rich in material goods, we are very rich in spirit. We like to keep everything in circulation in the right way, so we buy local, support our local Co-op and farmers, and share things with our neighbors.

My current obsession is traveling in Spain as a touring musician- I'm hoping to go on my third trip in 2017!- and generally diving into experiences and cultures that make my curiosity explode.

Supporting my via my Etsy store *literally* means the world to me, so thank you to all of my loyal customers, and a big HELLO to my friends that I haven't met yet.

Sweet Dreams and Moonbeams from Northern California...

xoxo

Sasha